


Too Little, Too Late

by heathercat56



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: Angst, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-18
Updated: 2016-08-14
Packaged: 2018-07-24 17:57:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7517809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heathercat56/pseuds/heathercat56
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three related stories about Brianna's photographs. Three different time periods. Each chapter has echoes of another chapter in it. Spoilers for Voyager and Drums.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lallybroch

**Author's Note:**

> The following is part 1 of a 3 part story that grew from the first prompt I received as part of auditions for joining up with ImagineClaireandJamie. Once again, if you’ve seen this prompt before, no you’re not imagining things. :)  
> “PROMPT #1) Hi can you please have one around Voyager where Claire catches Jamie talking to a picture of Brianna, telling stories, wisdom, etc or just anything to do with the pictures and Jamie learning about Bree, I feel like it’s underutilized in the book. “  
> I started with what became chapter 2, then sat on it for too long until my brain produced two more stories on the same prompt. Like a damned mold, it made babies. So rather than choosing which, I reworked it to a 3 chapter story instead.  
> Perhaps I’m being overly ambitious, but I designed the story like a triptych and plan on creating fan art to accompany each chapter and will post that art when done.  
> Spoilers for Voyager in parts 1 and 2 and Drums in part 3.
> 
> Part 1 takes place within Voyager at Lallybroch the day after Claire and Jamie have their knock-down, drag-out fight after Marsali shows up.

**Too Little, Too Late - Chapter 1 of 3**

Lallybroch - 1766 - the day after Aunt Claire left

 

Ian peeked into the room expecting Jamie to still be asleep. He had walked by only 15 minutes prior and his uncle had been a shivering lump in his camp bed.

Instead he found him half crouched, half kneeling by the fire, still shivering slightly and whispering to himself with something cradled carefully in his hands. He approached cautiously, not wanting to upset him.

“Uncle? How are you feeling?”

He got a quiet groan in response. “Go away.”

Ignoring this, he took another step into the room; Ian was curious about what exactly he held so gently and possessively in his grasp.

His uncle’s fever had started the night before. He had always been told that a fever sapped you of your energy and you needed to preserve it. But with Jamie, in true stubborn Fraser fashion it had escalated quickly into a belligerent rage with further dents in the walls beyond what his mother had found there initially in the wake of Claire leaving. There were buckets of broken pottery in the kitchen now as well. Ian fled the house at one point, frightened at the booming, scathing words that poured from his uncle’s mouth directed at his mother and father.

He blamed them for Claire’s sudden departure. For not keeping Laoghaire away until he could explain. For not keeping Laoghaire’s daughters away. For conniving him into marrying the bitch in the first place.

Since then, his uncle had refused food or company and became closer to what one would expect of someone who had been shot and had a festering wound: drifting in and out of consciousness, unable or unwilling to interact with his environment, the fever overtaking all.

Ian took a deep breath and pushed forward into the room. Jamie’s hand went up to stop him, not even looking at his nephew, but continuing to stare at whatever lay in his palm.

“Leave.”

“Uncle, I really…”

“Go. Now.” Jamie said this with a deadly tone that raised the hairs on the back of Ian’s neck as he reversed back into the corridor.

Instead of leaving altogether, though, he heeded his mother’s request to keep an eye and ear out and turned to crouch against the wall next to the doorframe.

——

An hour later, Ian awoke in the corridor to the sound of his uncle’s whispers in Gaelic. Not wanting to intrude yet again so soon, he listened at the door, but only was able to hear bits and pieces.

“…never deserved you…”

“…what I’ve done…”

“…punishing me…”

“…deserves better…”

“…too little, too late…”

“…selfish…so damned selfish…”

“…everything I touch…”

“…I deserve it…”

He heard a rustling of paper and slowly shifted from his cold seat in the hall to peer into the room. Ian caught the reflection of tears on his cheeks in the firelight. He’d never seen Uncle Jamie cry before.

Ian continued to watch silently as he saw Jamie put a stack of what looked like brightly painted heavy card stock into a paper packet, re-fold it together, toss it into the fire and collapse back against the camp bed, curling away from the fireplace as an earthworm from the sun.

What his uncle failed to see in his flop backwards was that the packet had bounced off one of the peat logs and came to rest on the floor five inches from the edge of the bed.

Ian waited until his uncle’s hitched breathing under the blanket had subsided and he was undoubtedly asleep before retrieving the package from the floor and putting it in Jamie’s overcoat downstairs.

Late last night, his father had found him sleeping in the barn with the horses and had reassured Ian that you should never trust or listen to what someone said or did while they were fevered or taken with drink. And whatever was in that packet, Ian had the feeling his uncle might regret not having it later when he recovered.

If he recovered.

Based on his behavior, Ian wasn’t sure his uncle _wanted_ to recover, much less that he could.

He knew his Aunt Claire was a great healer; he had heard the stories. Regardless of whether or not he could get her to agree to forgive Jamie and stay, her medical skills were needed. He had to find her before it was too late.


	2. The Artemis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three related stories about Brianna's photographs. Three different time periods. Each chapter has echoes of another chapter in it. Spoilers for Voyager and Drums.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is Chapter 2 of my 3-part series around the prompt for more about the photographs of Brianna.   
> (I might be able to put together a chapter 1B if anyone wanted a more direct continuation of Chapter 1 - just message, reply, ask, comment, etc. Pretty please?)  
> As I mentioned in part 1, I’ll be making artwork to go with each of these and posting separately.
> 
> Spoilers for Voyager.
> 
> The following takes place within Voyager after Jamie, Claire, Fergus and Marsali are all aboard The Artemis.

**Too Little, Too Late - Chapter 2**

The Artemis - Day 10 of the voyage

Feeling appropriately frustrated, Claire found her errant Supercargo on deck in the shadow of the mainmast, looking down at his left palm as if it held the secrets of the universe.

“Jamie, there’s a Mister McFinney that is looking for you. I can barely understand his Irish Gaelic, but I think he might be looking for a barrel of squid?”

“Aye. He likely means the squid INK I keep in the Captain’s quarters. McFinney is helping me with inventory.”

Claire sidled up to her raggedy husband, hoping to see what was in his hand. He had seemed distracted earlier when giving out orders for the day to the crew and she was determined to stick her nose in and find out why. He put his hand back in his pocket before she could see what had his focus.

Neither of them had fully bathed in quite a while, and with all the work with rope, tackle and steering, not to mention writing, she was convinced that Jamie had at least a few blisters on his hands that he was trying to hide from her, possibly burst and infected ones. That simply wouldn’t do.

“What have you got there?”, she said as she snatched at his hand. She missed it and grabbed him by the wrist and dragged it forcibly out of his pocket with a glare at him.

Instead of finding a furtive open wound however, Claire suppressed a smile at seeing one of Brianna’s photographs in Jamie’s hand, curled up there like a student’s cheat sheet. It was the one of her by the fire, with the wind fanning her hair out echoing the flames she looked upon, the colors vivid on the paper in his palm. She leaned in to his ear and whispered, “Is there any particular reason you’ve got that out and about on deck where anyone could see it?”

“Oh, aye. I was thinking about where on earth I might be able to find a priest once we get to land. The last thing I want is to have to keep those two separate for months when it’s just the four of us again.” She followed Jamie’s gaze towards the starboard side to see Marsali and Fergus side by side, looking out at the rising and falling horizon, hands clasped on the railing.

“Enforcing separate berthing is simple enough with doors and witnesses on board. But once we hit the islands and jungles… Well, I dinna expect you’d want to continue that arrangement for too much longer, Sassenach,” he said with a sly grin.

“It seems strange to have my foster son wishing to marry my… stepdaughter. I intend to walk her down the aisle, as I should, but it got me to thinking. What about Brianna?” He looked down at Claire with a squint against the sun and yet behind the squint was a deeper sadness she hadn’t expected to see on his face in this context.

She paused for a second, unsure of where he was going with this. “What do you mean? What about Brianna?”

“Well… I’m here.”

“Yes?”

“And she’s… out there,” he gestured at the open sea beyond the deck. “You said she’ll decide on her own when and even IF she marries,” he said with a chuckle. “But I canna be there to walk her down the aisle.”

Claire realized with a shock that the same applied to her as well. Unless some catastrophe occurred, to which she made a hasty sign of the cross in her mind, she would remain in the past with Jamie. Where she belonged. But she would never see her daughter marry and the fact that she hadn’t even thought of that before leaving the 1960s suddenly infuriated her.

_Too bloody little, too bloody late, Beauchamp._

“And so, I’ve been carrying that fool picture with me all day trying to… to see her. As she would be on her wedding day. To paint on the years that I dinna get to be there for.”

Claire cleared her throat to sweep away the lump and the angry tears that threatened to begin. She could cry in private later, but the ache for her daughter flowed through her veins.

“Well, if it’s purely a visual you’re looking for, I might be able to help with that. You see, in…,” she did some quick calculations, “…eighty years or so, it became very fashionable, and not too much later it was actually expected that the bride wear specifically a white dress for her wedding.”

“White? All white?”

She nodded.

“Well that’s hardly very practical,” he scoffed.

“Yes, and a veil to cover her face, too, but usually made of a thin tulle so you can see through it. The white of the dress was to symbolize innocence and purity… and virginity.”

Jamie grinned at this and bent to whisper in her ear.

“So it should ha’ been me wearing all white on our wedding day, eh Sassenach?”

Claire had to clap her hand over her mouth to stifle a guffaw at the mental image of her proud Highland warrior husband with a fistful of daisies, wearing a white, lacy, shift dress, which had been the latest fashion when she left Boston in 1968.

After taking a moment to get herself under control, she whispered back between fits of giggles, “Oh, no one cared whether the MEN were virgins or not.” She stopped to take a deeper breath to calm her clenched diaphragm. “Not that they do now, either, come to that.”

Jamie continued to squint down at his wife, unsure of what exactly she thought was so funny about a man leaving himself unsullied for his bride. After all, Claire certainly didn’t seem amused at the prospect when they wed years earlier.

“So… a white dress.”

“Yes,” she said, taking a final deep breath in and out.

“And a veil.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you, Mo Ghraid.”

He bent to kiss her quickly before tucking the photo back in his coat pocket, then headed towards the bridge to intercept Mister McFinney and his search for squid.


	3. The Ridge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three related stories about Brianna's photographs. Three different time periods. Each chapter has echoes of another chapter in it. Spoilers for Voyager and Drums.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is set within Drums of Autumn after Jamie, Claire and Ian have settled in to the Ridge, but prior to Brianna's arrival. Reminder that in the photo where Bree is 10, she's seen hugging a black Newfoundland dog. You'll be glad I reminded you. :)

September 29th, 1768 - The Ridge

 

After nearly pulling his arm out of his socket for the second time in his life the day before, Claire insisted that Jamie take a break from hard manual labor and accompany her in foraging for food and herbs nearby.

 

He resisted until Claire pointed out that being together away from the house also meant being away from Ian for a while. Alone.

 

"Surely you might be able to find the time and take a 'wee break'?" she asked, batting her eyelashes and  _ almost _ successfully rolling the 'R' in 'break'.

He paused before answering, appraising his wife like a prize mare. "Oh, I think we dinna need the break to be quite so wee, eh Sassenach?"

 

\------

 

Later that day near sunset, they headed back to the house, baskets moderately full of woodears and late blackberries for food; mosses and other herbs for medicine and bandages; and Jamie with arms full of much needed kindling and a pair of rabbits slung over his shoulder. Both of them had old leaves, burrs and other bits of the forest floor stuck to their hair and backsides.

 

Claire asked him what the white deerskin pouch was for. She had noticed it a week ago swinging from his belt underneath his coat. He had been chasing after the squirrel they called Lucifer who regularly stole their seeds, but she had forgotten to ask about it until now.

 

She was surprised to see a flush of red creep up his neck in embarrassment. "Och, it's nothing."

"Oh no you don't. Now I must know," she said, snatching at it as Jamie tried to dodge.

 

With hands full of rabbit and kindling, he relented and let her take it from his belt. Eyeing it suspiciously and hefting it to see that while light in weight, it was far from empty, she sat down in the middle of the trail and emptied the contents into a scoop of skirt in her lap. Jamie put down his load and knelt next to Claire, still a bit pink in the face.

 

He gestured to the contents of the pouch, which Claire saw as nothing more than detritus fit for a wastebasket. Trash.

"It's... Brianna," he said quietly but clearly, as if that explained everything.

"What on earth do you mean?"

"Well... after the wreck near Georgia, I found I'd lost all of the pictures of her..."

"I know. Oh, Jamie, I -" she started apologetically. He put his hand up to stop her.

"Dinna fash," he said with a half smile. "It's just that... sometimes I like to pretend I can see her. And in my dreams, sometimes I can," he said, bringing Claire up short with a brief chuckle.

 

"And sometimes... I find things that remind me of the colors in the pictures. Or of her. Or of her life I saw in those pictures like a beggar looking through a shop window at the feast or jewels he can never have. I dinna wish to conjure her spirit or anything, but these things... I'd like to hold them close... As I wish I could hold her close, Sassenach." He spread his hand out over the pile, caressing the air over it.

" _A Leannan_ ."

 

Claire looked down at the assortment of items laying in her skirt and began to pick up the pieces one at a time.

 

A dark red leaf which she recognized as Virginia Sweetspire or Virginia Willow, tattered and halfway skeletonized. Jamie pointed at the sections of plant matter that hadn't broken away yet. "I found that at River Run. You said her hair was the same color as mine, aye? But after a few months, this one started to fray, so I found another..."

 

He picked out another dark red leaf from a pear tree, smaller, but thicker with a waxy finish.

"This one was almost the same color and seemed like it was made of sturdier stuff... Like she might be... like you are. But I wanted to keep the old one, too. She is still a young girl and canna have NO frailties, can she?" He looked sideways at Claire with a grin at this.

 

A rolled piece of wax paper twisted on both ends like a piece of candy, but with something dark inside. She opened it to reveal some broken lengths of charcoal for writing or drawing. "You mentioned she liked to draw..."

 

A small white feather.

"From a dove's nest near River Run. There's a Gaelic prayer I use with that one..."

 

And with each piece she picked out of the pile, and with each shy confession of its significance, she found she was that much closer to tears.

 

As the sun was setting around them, the forest above came to life in the rustle of squirrels and birds flitting through the treetops. The final rays shone through the canopy making the leaves and the very air glow with a golden radiance. Claire looked up momentarily and saw that God was with them, witnessing this final reconciliation of lost past and mindful present.

 

She picked up a small scrap of bear hide with its black and matted fur. "Jamie, what on earth-"

"There was a dog in one of the pictures. You said it was from... Finland?"

 

At this, the dam broke. Uncertain of whether to cry at how much she missed her daughter or laugh at remembering that damnable dog Frank had insisted on, she instead did both. Collapsing forward in alternating sobs and guffaws, her muzzled and buried dual emotions spilled into the cold Carolina air. Jamie collected her in his arms, rocking her and whispering Gaelic reassurances much as he had that first day at Leoch days after meeting.

 

She loved her daughter as her body loved air. But it was time to let go. She realized she hadn't only brought the photographs two hundred years through the stones for Jamie. She had brought them for herself as well, as a totem; reminder of what she had created in those lost years and what she had to sacrifice in order to be with the love of her life.

He held her, his own soft voice cracking at this ultimate loss once again of a daughter he would never meet.

 

But for Claire, it was worth everything.

All the wasted years spent trying to be the good wife to Frank, the perfect mother to Bree.

She could finally be just herself again.

Here.

With Jamie.

Just Claire.

 

It was everything and it wasn't too late.


	4. Small Mercies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie realizes that he still has the photographs thanks to the quick thinking of Ian. Drabble-length.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a direct continuation from the end of Chapter 1. As such it's not so much chapter 4 as chapter 1B. 
> 
> I'm going to consider this fic now complete. 
> 
> Unless I change my mind later. ;)  
> \------

Small Mercies - Too Little, Too Late Chapter 1B

 

"Thank the Lord for small mercies," Jamie whispered. He had his hand in his leather coat downstairs and slowly pulled out the packet of photographs from the inner pocket.

 

They were getting ready to leave Lallybroch, and Jamie was searching for his letter of release from John Grey that he normally kept in his left jacket pocket as proof of his freedom. But when he dipped his hand in the pocket to ensure it was still there, he found the thin package slipped next to it.

 

_So it was a dream._

 

But when he examined the paper, it was singed on one corner.

 

"Uncle? I thought you might be needing that, whatever it was." Young Ian had snuck up on Jamie, startling him.

 

"Oh, erm, yes. Yes, definitely," he said, distracted as he carefully opened the package an inch to view the contents without showing them to Ian.

 

Being boldly curious, Ian shiftedslightly, trying to change position to try and see into the package he had saved from the fire. "If I may be so bold, Uncle, can I ask what..."

 

"They're talismans, a bhalaich. Brought by yer Auntie. They're..." He paused and closed the package back up, but continued to hold them in both hands, caressing the surface with his thumbs .

 

"They're wee portraits and landscapes. She came by them in our time apart and they served to remind her of me, of Scotland, during our time apart."

 

"And now that she's back, she gave them to you?"

 

"Aye. They helped keep me in her heart and so they're precious to her... and precious to me, too." He looked up at his nephew and brought a hand up to his shoulder and squeezed it in thanks, receiving a shy smile in reply. 

 

"Tang dhuit, a pheathar. Truly."


End file.
